All That Ever Could Be
by sap1066
Summary: In any other circumstance she might have called it love, or passion, but now, its name was need. Nine/Rose. Romance. Sex. Popcorn.
1. Chapter 1

She floated in the darkness. And then, a swirl of images across the blackness of her mind. Fleeting, a tiny swift touch of light and life and then gone. She struggled to put names to the pictures but they passed her by and faded into the dark. She drifted. And then, another rush. A sheaf of images outlined in gold. They flowed past her consciousness and faded more slowly. She felt vaguely that she should be worried — like someone was having an argument in a room next door that she couldn't quite hear. The images poured back in a flood, racing through her mind, turning the darkness into shards of colour, tugging her with them, refusing to let her sleep. She felt the pull to follow and she fought her way upwards out of the dark, following the trail of yellow light.

She became aware that she was lying on her back. Lying on her back on a cold, hard floor. In fact, some sort of a metal grill, if the message coming from her fingertips was to be believed. She could see a green light leaching through her eyelids and the most pounding headache she had ever felt begin an insistent throbbing in her skull. Groaning, she cracked open her eyes the smallest slit and looked up. High above her, a circular ceiling and a white, wishbone strut behind her arching up to meet it. She felt... It was a surprise to realise that it felt familiar, comforting almost, despite the bleakness of the structures. The word surfaced through her confusion. TARDIS. And the recognition of the word brought her back fully to herself. She was lying on the floor, in the TARDIS, when the last thing she remembered was standing, surrounded by danger on the top floor of Satellite 5, facing down a horde of Daleks and hearing someone else speak through her lips. She tried to concentrate on the memory but the throbbing in her head intensified.

She groaned again and rolled over onto her side, half opening her eyes against the green light bleeding from the floor. She recognised the bottom edge of the console a couple of paces away and in front of it — boots. Black boots, leading to black jeans encasing long lean legs, leading upwards to more black. Leather this time, stretched across broad shoulders. A man. Short dark hair, an aquiline nose, blue eyes — which were currently fixed on the screen in front of him and not looking at her at all. He was drumming his fingers against the console panel and she could see the tension in his shoulders like a shout from across the room.

She felt a wave of heat radiate from her stomach to her face, making her blush. He was alive then. Not dead. She had succeeded in saving him from his circling enemies and somehow they were together again. Alive, and on the ship. She couldn't control the smile that formed across her mouth as she sat up, braced on one arm. And immediately regretted it, feeling a renewed pounding behind her eyes that made her dizzy.

Fighting down the nausea she asked, 'What happened?'

As she looked over towards him for an answer she thought her headache worsened noticeably. She was seeing double. Or at least double, she corrected. In his familiar shape, the figure she had watched and followed for months, as familiar to her as her own shadow, she could see reflections. No, not reflections, but something like the echoes you get when you look at a light for too long. She could see the impressions of at least three people standing in his position, pressed so tightly together they were difficult to tell apart. She could see a whisper of purple around his jacket, the impression of longer, straighter brown hair and even — she squinted to make sure — the suspicion of a hat. Even his size seemed doubled, reflections of people taller and shorter within the outline he cast in the lights of the console. She shook her head, earning another jolt of pain and screwed up her eyes to concentrate. He turned his head towards her, fixing his eyes on a point just in front of her on the floor. Odd, she thought, why isn't he looking at me? Usually he couldn't take his eyes off her, so much so that she sometimes found it uncomfortable. And as her dizziness resumed — he doesn't look like he's going to help me up either.

He cleared his throat: 'Don't you remember?' He sounded strange, she thought; hollow, almost like he didn't really want the answer to the question.

She considered, 'I remember...standing in the TARDIS and thinking about you. I remember wanting, no, needing to see you.' At this, his eyes flicked upwards to almost meet hers before he dropped them to the floor again. 'And there you were. Surrounded by Daleks'. She shuddered. 'I remember wanting to save you, to make them go away. But I couldn't see properly, like everything around me was moving and I couldn't keep it still. There was a golden light and I remember hearing words — someone talking, that might have been me. I remember reaching out into the light for something and then.' She faltered, 'I'm not sure'.

She looked up at him quizzically, asking for an explanation, but his gaze remained fixed to the floor. She sighed, and braving the pain banging out a crescendo in her head, pushed herself gingerly to her feet, staggering forward a few paces until she could steady herself on the edge of the console. There was a pause. She had the distinct impression he was shaking, almost too slightly to notice. Slowly, he raked his gaze up from the floor and fixed her directly with his steel blue eyes.

He was angry. He was so angry. As soon as he looked into her eyes she could feel it — he was trying to control it, trying so hard that the effort was making him tremble. His anger washed across her and she felt something else riding on the back of it. There was fear there certainly, but something else as well, just as strong as his rage. She caught herself — just how was she managing to analyse what he was thinking when he hadn't said more than two words to her since she woke up?

'Let me tell you what I remember'. His words were a soft hiss across the room. 'I distinctly remember closing the TARDIS door behind me and sending you home. I remember making sure you had very clear instructions to stop this ship falling into the hands of the enemies my people died to destroy. What I do not remember doing,' and at this he abruptly straightened and stalked his way across the few feet that separated them, 'is suggesting you smash up my ship, steal its power, fly it straight back and practically gift-wrap it for the Daleks'. At this point he was standing right in front of her, piercing her with his gaze. 'And I explicitly do not remember giving you permission to pretend you were some kind of all powerful god and play around with my life.' He didn't raise his voice, but the words he spat at her had the burn of acid.

He was so close now she could hear him swallow, see the beads of sweat around his temples, practically smell his anger. His eyes shot sparks at her and she was overwhelmed. The pounding in her head got worse and for a minute she had to close her eyes against it. She could feel how appalled he was in the core of her being; far stronger than just guessing what he felt, she knew it in her heart. If she had had the strength to step away from him she would have moved. Her eyes filled with tears, which at least give her some respite from the swirling in her vision.

'You needed me,' she whispered brokenly.

He snorted, and flung away from her: 'I needed you? I don't think so. I've got lifetimes of experience behind me, power you have no conception of and you can do what — fold clothes? It's the arrogance of it that gets me' — and his voice scaled upwards into a shout as he completed the circuit if the room and ended up in front of her — 'I decide — do you hear me? If I decide to save you then you stay saved. If I decide to face my enemies on my own then that's my choice. It's not up to you to decide if I live or die. I don't need you or anyone else to make my decisions for me.' He stood in front of her, face pressed nearly into hers, spittle flying out of his mouth in his rage.

Again, she could feel the terror and the —something else- behind his words, her own emotions a tiny voice in the storm of his anger. She steeled herself against a rush of dizziness to reply. 'But I needed you,' she said, her free hand making supplicating gestures at her side.

She felt his restraint snap like a gunshot as his anger fell away. Staring up into his eyes she saw them fill with tears as he looked at her, devouring her gaze with a religious intensity. Slowly, he raised his hand to her face, sliding his fingers into her hair as his thumb grazed her cheek.

'Rose,' he muttered. She could feel the nerves in her face respond like a lick of fire where he had touched her and she felt a wave of emotion wash over her. In any other circumstance she might have called it love, or passion, but now, its name was need. Before she could still her dizziness enough to respond she found herself crushed in his arms, his face pressed into her hair, his arms straining to hold her as close as his own shadow. Brought into proximity with his body the borrowed sensations she had felt intensified. She was lost in her awareness of him, of the strength of his muscles underneath his clothes, of the strange coolness of his embrace and the rising heat against her stomach.

Cascades of fear and need poured through her, passing though their layers of clothing to skin on skin. She felt his shoulders shift as he moved backwards, giving her a chance to breathe, and a chance to see patterning in front of her eyes as her headache claimed her. His mouth drove down to meet her lips and she lost all sense of herself in his punishing kiss. I thought I'd lost you, she heard him say, although she knew the words had arrived straight into her mind without bothering with her ears. The words brought her back to herself. She felt an echo of his need rise from her stomach and her heart missed a beat as she recalled the absolute terror and hopelessness of losing him, left alone in the TARDIS on her own. She opened her mouth.

Instantly, his tongue pushed past her lips into the recesses of her mouth, setting up a rhythmic pattern that made her shiver. Trusting him to hold her up she let go of the console and reached both arms up, feeling the wool of his jumper and the taut chest beneath under her fingers before entwining her arms around his neck. She had no chance to kiss him back. He was in control and she felt his need for her driving him forward. As much as she wanted him she could only acquiesce. She raised her hands to the back of his neck to lock them closer together and she could feel him groan.

He shifted a hand down her back, inching lower across the swell of her bottom until his hand was resting between the join of her legs and he pushed her hips closely against his. She could feel his desire for her with the contact between them, hot and hard, but she had lost all will to move, to stop, to consider whether this was what she wanted. All she could feel was her need to know that he was alive, that he was still there, still hers.

His other hand grazed down her back to the top of her trousers, moving her red top up and out of the way as his fingers found bare flesh. He slid his hand purposefully up her back, running his fingers over the bones of her spine until he reached the clasp of her bra and flicked it open. In the back of her mind she wondered what else lifetimes of experience had taught him. Feeling her breast free he moved his hand in a smooth slide around to her chest, pushing the lace out of the way as he did so. His hand squeezed her breast strongly, almost roughly, and she stiffened in response. His fingers found her nipple, already hard for him and he brushed his thumb across it, once, twice, three times. She felt an answering rush of warmth between her legs and pressed her hips more closely into his. He took her nipple between his fingers and squeezed gently, pulling and rubbing, flicking across the sensitive skin more and more quickly.

She felt a drawing sensation between her legs as ripples of pleasure began to cycle upwards through her stomach and she knew she was damp. As if sensing her readiness she felt his hands move, both coming forward to the fastening of her black trousers as he released the button that held them closed. Too fast, too fast she thought for a split second before waves of need washing though her carried her away. The small movements of his hips against her softness told of his desire — he wanted to touch her, to feel her warm and alive under him, to reassure himself that she hadn't abandoned him, that he wasn't alone. She felt his hips engage against hers as he pushed his knee between her thighs, rubbing the hardness she could feel through his trousers at her throbbing centre. The pleasure threading through her tightened and she caught her breath, trying to respond against the increasingly wild thrusts of his tongue.

And then he drew back, not releasing his domination of her mouth as she heard him freeing himself from his clothing, felt her trousers pushed down as both his hands curved around her bottom, parting her legs as he lifted her up and backwards so she was lying on the console. For a split second she felt him against her leg, large and throbbing before he shifted again and drove into her in a single thrust. There was pain. She knew she wasn't quite ready, knew there would be consequences, but as he buried himself within her body she didn't care.

He withdrew slightly and pushed into her again, changing his angle to rub against her more closely. He withdrew and pushed again, again, matching his strokes to the rhythm of his kiss. She could feel her orgasm starting to build, pain forgotten as he moved inside her, stretching her to fit him completely. She felt joined to him in a far deeper way than the physical; as he moved in and out she could feel her own pleasure mounting with his. She dug her fingernails into his shoulder and brought up her knees to grip him more closely and she could feel how the position enhanced his sensations, made him push into her more deeply. She felt her world contract down to the push and pull inside her, concentrating her thoughts on finding the white hot pleasure she knew was promised. He groaned and thrust himself into her with less control, clearly losing any restraint as he struggled towards his climax. She felt her muscles contract around him, holding him clenched firmly inside as she began to shudder in regular waves.

She ripped her head away from his kiss, arching her back and pushing her hips upward to let him fill her more deeply. He braced his hands above her head and threw his whole weight forward into her, again and again. She was rising, rising, and waiting for him to push her over the edge. She heard him cry out and felt his release as he spasmed inside her. She voiced a strangled cry as she came, hard and desperate, her fingers gouging his back as the blistering heat expanded outwards.

And in the minute of her orgasm she felt the darkness and the pain from her head closing around her again, dragging her down and away from him into the black.

Read my novels The Postman's Daughter and The Car Crash Bride by Sally Anne Palmer available now on Amazon fore less than £4.


	2. Chapter 2

He knew what he had done. Even as the last spasms of his climax faded away he knew what he had done. He felt like he was coming back home after a long time away, feeling more aware and in control of his body as the seconds edged past. He could sense his feet planted on the floor, feel his hands braced against the familiar dials and switches of the console, holding him up. He could feel, underneath him…. He could feel her soft body, pliant and yielding, supporting his weight but unmoving. He was still inside her but he didn't dare open his eyes.

He knew he had crossed a line, knew he had taken a step forward that he couldn't take back. It wasn't as if he hadn't been aware of the danger, hadn't been struggling against his desire for months. He couldn't even excuse himself that the euphoria of seeing her alive had pushed him into it, because he had been imagining sex with her for as long as he could remember. And it was more than just sex too. In the dark hours of the night when she lay in bed and he wandered the ship alone he had acknowledged to himself just how much he loved her.

He didn't believe in love at first sight. In fact, he thought it had taken him at least two whole days to fall in love with her. He had been surprisingly conventional about it even then. It was only after seeing her in a dress that he finally realised she was a woman, and beautiful, something to be desired. Her willingness to join with him, to die with him, without a hint of recrimination had completed the path towards his ruin. Since then he had watched her, stared at her when she wasn't looking, held her hand any time he possibly could, held her when he thought he could get away with it. Every time they were mistaken for a couple a piece of his heart sang, before he strangled it.

Because there was no way he could do anything about the way he felt. She knew the reasons — he was too old, too different, too accustomed to seeing times, places, people pass away and change into something else. And then there was the question of what he had done, the burning canker that ate into his soul. He hadn't told her about the Time War, not properly. Hadn't detailed his part in the death and destruction of everything he had ever loved. Hadn't told her about the burden of guilt he cherished, hovering behind all his words, all his actions. He could run from it, but it was always waiting for him. Guilt. Loss. Loneliness.

But even though he hadn't told her, he thought she probably knew. There were times when she looked at him, when he swore she could tell how much he needed her. Other times when she was off flirting with the next unsuitable man and she didn't see him at all, of course. But sometimes.

He wondered if she knew what she had done for him. How she had taken his rootless travelling and given it a purpose, let him see again the wonder of experiencing the new through her eyes. She had taught him what it was like to live again. To move forward, not because you were running away from the past, but because you had something to look forward to. He needed her like breathing. A little bit less sometimes than most, but essential nonetheless.

And now he had destroyed it all. Something else he loved had fallen into dust. He didn't dare open his eyes to face the implosion of his new life. Didn't want to see the betrayal in her eyes, hear her accusations, feel her pain. He hadn't even asked her what she wanted, he realised. He had seen her wake up and all his love and pain, all the fear of having lost her and the joy of seeing her alive had come churning out as anger. He hadn't meant any of it. The walls of control he had built up had come tumbling down in seconds and he had taken what he wanted.

In fact, he realised, he hadn't even checked to see if she was ready, hadn't made sure she had reached her peak before he had found his own release. Shame joined his usual, gut twisting guilt.

Coward, coward, he berated himself, get on with it. Quickly he opened his eyes and looked at her. She was lying right below him, eyes closed, face flushed, mouth clearly red and sore. His eyes misted. He said her name. She didn't respond. Her eyelids didn't even twitch. He tried again. No answer. Moving gently, but quickly, he pushed himself backwards off her, disengaging and rearranging his clothing. Standing, he just looked at the evidence of his crime spread out in front of him. She lay, half naked and vulnerable, clothes awry, traces of him shining on her thighs. Mouth clenched against his misery he reached over and shook her gently, calling her, asking her to wake up. She didn't. Now he was worried. Either he'd been a lot rougher than he remembered — as if that wasn't bad enough — or something else was going on.

He fumbled in the pocket of his jacket for the sonic screwdriver and ran it over her body. Nothing that he wouldn't have expected - until he tried scanning her mind. The signals he got from there confused him — too familiar — and for that reason, impossible. He pushed aside his shame and guilt so that he could concentrate his care and concern on Rose. He scooped her up into his arms, a dead weight with no flicker of volition, and carried her down the corridor to the medical centre.

He called up his mental link with the TARDIS as he walked, checking with her empathic senses whether there was some kind of illness or intruder on board that he had missed. He couldn't speak to the TARDIS, not direct words anyway, but the communication of emotion was enough to help him guide her, steer her, know what she needed, tell her what to do. Now that instruction involved a fully functional hospital wing, preferably stuffed with nurses and glistening with banks of equipment. What he got was a small white room, bare apart from a wooden chair, a single bed and a very serious looking scanner. The chair was for him. He rarely got sick, at least not with any illness that wasn't regeneration related and he had had the zero room for that. He pulled back the thin sheet and deposited her on the bed, stripping her off her remaining clothes before covering her up. He tried to see her nakedness with clinical dispassion but he was glad nevertheless when she lay beneath the sheet.

Punching buttons on the wall scanner he ran the diagnostic. All her readouts indicated she was a perfectly normal human female. Internal organs operating within parameters, not pregnant, he noted, although that would have been practically impossible anyway, and she had certainly eaten a few more chips since he'd last had her under the scanner, but otherwise normal. It was only when he reached her brainwave readouts that he paused. Resetting the controls he scanned her mind again, not wanting to believe what he saw, and then ran the programme a third time, just for luck.

He understood why she wasn't awake. In fact, he had a hard time understanding why she was still alive at all. He slumped heavily in the chair, head down, arms resting on his knees as he considered the consequences. She was human certainly, but her brainwaves showed some similarities with his own. She still had the vortex in her head. Well, not strictly true. When he had kissed her the first time he had pulled the power back out of her as far as he could. If she had really had had the vortex in her mind all this time, her brain would have come pouring out of her eyes long before now. She had held the power too long to be completely undamaged though. He could still feel the residue in his own mind and he had only contained it for a short time. She had an echo of the vortex inside her. Not enough to kill her, but enough to change her life completely.

From the time she woke, for the rest of her life, she would be able to see everything he saw, the past, the present and future a turning, swirling morass at the forefront of her brain. Everywhere she looked she would see endless change, endless possibilities, enough information to overwhelm a Time Lord, let alone a human girl. He had spent years learning to control the visions, to focus hard enough on the present to put one foot in front of the other, day by day. How would she cope — looking at her home and seeing it rise from nothing and fall again in the blink of an eye? How would she cope — seeing her mother born and dying in front of her with every glance? And imagine what she would feel when she realised what she could do with the knowledge.

He sighed — this was just yet another awful consequence of his decision to take her with him, to involve her in his life. He had put her in danger time and again, running her through countless near misses and finally had allowed her to stand alone in front of his greatest enemy while he cowered at her feet. He had taken everything she had offered — and some things she hadn't — he reminded himself. Now, when she woke up, she wouldn't even recognise her own mind and there wasn't a single thing he could think of to do to make it right. He dropped his head to his chest, hunched down in the chair, beaten, hopeless, and waited for her to wake up.

My novel, The Postman's Daughter by Sally Anne Palmer is inspired by the stories I have been posting here - if you are enjoying them, then you will like the novel too.


	3. Chapter 3

She floated in the darkness. This time though, she was more familiar with it, she recognised it for what it was.

When the rill of golden images began to stream past her she accepted them, tried to grasp them as they flickered by, to comprehend their meaning. She hung suspended, drifting, with no sense of time passing and no memory of where she was. She concentrated on the sensations tumbling through her head, a cascade of sounds, smell, tastes, impressions of other places, other times, knowledge she hadn't earned and hadn't asked for.

At first, she had tried to shut her mind to the constant visual noise, to return to the blessed silence of her thoughts. But she couldn't just switch it off. It forced her concentration, piqued her curiosity. After all, she had seen far more in her short life than almost anyone else she knew ever would. She had been given a taste of something bigger, and the images rushing through her mind teased her with the promise of more. Eventually, she relaxed and gave herself over to the tide, accepting the flotsam of time begin thrown her way, letting it wash over and through her, leaving her changed. This was, she realised, something she might come to enjoy.

After a while — which could have been seconds or days - a nagging feeling crept up on her, that same unease that there was something that she should be worried about, happening just out of earshot. She threw off her somnolence, yanked herself towards wakefulness with an effort.

She was lying on her back. Again. This time though, was a definite improvement. She was certainly on something softer this time and when she gingerly opened her eyes it was white light flooding her vision, not green. She looked up, around. The medical centre then. OK. That was good. Raising her head slowly off the pillow she noticed two things — one, her clothes were lying neatly folded on a chair placed near the bed and two, that she really was quite sore. There was an awareness between her legs that wasn't usually there and an assortment of aches and pains in her shoulders to go with it. The strange blurring of her sight caught up with her at the same time as her memory of the last time she had been awake and she let herself relax against the pillow.

She had slept with him. The thought bought an uncontrollable surge of joy rising from her stomach, breaking out into a wide ear to ear grin that she didn't attempt to master. But then, and her grin faded, that wasn't exactly how she had imagined their first time to be. She realised that, the morning after, she wasn't actually feeling wanted, or loved, and, — as the smile dropped discarded from her face — that she had just woken up on her own. She could feel the tears forming behind her eyes as she remembered the anger shouting from every pore of his being, the terrible accusations he had flung her way. He had told her he didn't need her. The memory cut her soul. She swallowed. But then, if he didn't love her, didn't need her, why had he taken her so desperately? Wanted her enough to tear down the barriers that had stood between them for so long?

She had experienced his feelings with an exquisite intensity, absorbed his heart through his kiss. But where was he? Has she misunderstood somehow, confused by the strangeness inside her mind since she had woken that first time? She had known him brush off terrible danger with a quip, his manic smile, but could he ignore this? She was sure of one thing — whatever might have happened to her, however she might have changed, she was Rose Tyler and she wasn't going to be ignored by anyone.

She pushed herself into a sitting position, wincing as she did so. She was absolutely certain that if she looked round she would find a circular mark on her back from that bloody bell he was so fond of. Curse the TARDIS for not giving her something to dull the pain, she thought, what was the use of a machine that could go anywhere in time and space if it couldn't even find a Nurofen? She heard the scanner above her whiz into life and move down the wall towards her. Lying back to avoid it she watched its slow progress from her feet to her head and when its movement stopped she realised that she actually did feel better. She stretched, pulling the kinks from her back and, self consciously, reached over behind her and patted the wall.

Looking down, she saw for the first time that she was naked. A swift image of being undressed by him slipped unbidden into her mind and she flushed with embarrassment before she stamped on the traitorous feeling. First, she thought, wrapping the sheet around her, she was going to have a shower. Second, picking up her clothes with a flicker of distaste, something else to wear. And third, she thought, answers.

Some time later she was back in the console room. She had buckled herself into her best pair of jeans, laced up her strongest trainers, zipped her favourite top up to her neck. She was ready for anything. Or she would be, she thought, if only she could manage to see straight. Her headache had passed but the odd doubleness of her vision hadn't. She had expected the - empty - room to feel different, given the events of the previous night, but the bizarre interior design images she was seeing were beyond her — white walls she could deal with, but was that wood panelling?

She recognised her thoughts as distraction and steeled her resolve. The TARDIS was still and felt empty, the silent corridors echoing in her mind. If they were stopped that meant he had to be outside. She had been standing facing the doors for the best part of ten minutes, nervous and strong at the same time, hopeful of joy, braced for pain. She opened the door and took one pace outside.

He wasn't very far away, leaning against a tree, his arms folded on his chest, his leather clad shoulders braced against the world. His shadow cast a pall across the grass towards her, his lean body limned in the glow of a setting sun. All she could feel radiating from him was sadness.

Then she noticed the tree. As she watched she saw it wasn't a tree at all, just a sapling, a plant even. In fact, now she focused, she saw that this wasn't a forest after all but a vast tundra, windswept, edging grass-covered into the distance. But if she looked hard enough, she could still see the tree. Which still wasn't a tree, but the corner of some enormous concrete building, towering higher into the sky than she could see, while the wind carried the unmistakeable sound of grinding metal towards her — and the susurration of the grass, blowing in the breeze. Everywhere she looked she could see movement, constant change, two or three images jammed into the space where only one should be. A war torn landscape, pockmarked with craters, desert, a river valley, lush and verdant.

She felt hands on either side of her face, a sudden jolt of physical sensation that pulled her attention back to herself. He was resting on one knee, right in front of her, his slate blue eyes boring into hers. She realised she was sitting on the ground with no memory of how she had fallen.

'Rose,' he said, commanding, fixing her attention. 'Look at me Rose'. She fixed her eyes on his in desperation — seeking a fixed point in the chaos swirling round her. 'Can you stand?' he asked.

She nodded, too terrified to speak and he released his hands, caught hold of her elbows and raised them both to their feet. He guided her one, two steps backwards, in a parody of the dance moves they had played at long ago. He kicked the door of the TARDIS shut behind them and dropped his hands from her arms as if he had been burned. He broke her gaze abruptly, striding off behind her as she turned and staggered up the ramp to brace herself on the railing.

He was standing by the viewscreen — sweeping one arm up in an imperious gesture he pointed her at the control seat. 'Sit', he said. Shakily, she complied.

The metal of the floor clanged as he paced around to face her, leaning back against the console, legs crossed, arms folded, keeping the maximum distance between them. She filed away that observation in the small part of her brain that was still paying attention and found, to her relief, that she could still look him in the eye.

'What was that?' she asked, pleased that her voice gave only a hint of the terrors still subsiding within her.

He met her gaze and she saw his jaw tighten. She felt — nothing. There was no hint of the sadness she had glimpsed before, or the pain and vulnerability of the previous night. He was a cipher — inscrutable again. She couldn't tell what he was feeling, had no idea what he was going to do. She felt the loss of the connection like a little death, despite the pain it had caused her.

'That,' he answered, 'was the time vortex. It's inside your mind. It will always be in your mind and there's nothing that either of us can do to get it out.'

She frowned a question at him.

'It's there because you looked into the heart of the TARDIS and held the power inside you. Used it as well. There are,' he paused, 'always consequences for the use of that sort of power. You can't see the whole of time and space one minute and expect your mind just to snap back to the way it was the next.'

He had adopted that arrogant, didactic tone he always did when he was lecturing her about things she didn't understand. She wished he would just explain what he meant in words of one syllable.

'In words of one syllable, it means,' - she blinked - 'that you can see all that is, all that was, and all that ever could be — your words, not mine. When you step outside those doors you'll be able to see not just the present, wherever we land, but the past and future of those places as well. It's the same thing I see, like I told you before.'

She frowned, disbelieving. Does that mean I'm not human anymore then she wondered, some sort of alien, something like him? She dared not give voice to the questions for fear that the answers would cause her to collapse.

Unvoiced, he answered them anyway. 'Yes, you are still human, you can just do a bit more now, that's all. No, you aren't alien and no, you're nothing like me.' His face twitched, before he controlled it. She wondered what it meant. 'There's something else. You can see under the skin of the universe now, you've got a much stronger connection with it than you had before. And it can see you. It means that you've lost some of the protection you had before.'

She frowned again, uncomprehending. He sighed, 'It means I can see everything you're thinking. It's like you're shouting your thoughts across the room. I thought you should know.'

Instantly, she felt vulnerable, naked, with an uncontrollable desire to cover herself up, cross her arms around her chest. But then, she reminded herself, forcing her body not to move, he had already seen it all anyway. She saw the muscles around his eyes contract and she knew he had heard that too.

He took a breath. 'About last night', he gestured around the room, 'I'm sorry about that. It was a mistake. My fault. It won't happen again.' She stared at him, the memories of the surge of his need for her reverberating through her skull. He shifted uncomfortably. 'I've been on my own too long,' he shrugged, 'when you woke up, the shock of having you in my mind, I mean', he correctly quickly, 'being able to see what you were thinking was a bit too much'. He shrugged, 'As soon as I drop you off I'll go and pick up a few more people, maybe go to some parties, get out more, you know...'

She let that anachronism pass. 'Drop me off?' she whispered.

'You can't stay here anymore.' He said, sardonic, as if it was obvious. 'I'd have taken you home already except that you're too dangerous to be let out on your own. First I'm going to have to teach you how to control yourself and then I'm taking you back to your mother.' He tuned away from her, moving round to face the viewscreen and presenting her with his back. 'Now go and get some sleep, we're starting tomorrow.'

She was being dismissed. She could hear the finality in his tone. She wasn't even important enough to look at anymore. Mechanically she rose, walked the corridors back to her room. It was only when she lay on her bed that she allowed herself to cry.

Read my books, The Postman's Daughter and The Car Crash Bride by Sally Anne Palmer available now on Amazon.


	4. Chapter 4

It was the best gift he could give her. Staring blankly at the viewscreen while the sound of her footsteps faded he replayed the decisions he had made over the twelve hours she had been unconscious. Twelve hours spent rehearsing what he was going to say, twelve hours of predicting her reactions, thinking of countermoves. All in all, he thought, all things considered, not bad. Not fantastic. He didn't think anything would be fantastic ever again. He couldn't bear to think of his life when she finally was gone. But it had become clear to him that he couldn't make her stay with him anymore. He was utterly responsible for the irreparable damage to her mind. He had demonstrated that he couldn't control himself around her. The only way to protect her was to take her home. Teach her how to manage her injury and let her mother look after her.

But still, he knew enough about her to tell that she wouldn't go willingly. So he took the decision away from her. He had deliberately minimised the impact of sleeping with her, let he think he didn't care. As if sharing body and soul with the woman he loved could ever be a mistake — the circumstances, timing and execution were poor, he admitted that, but he wouldn't deny what he felt for her. He had to hurt her, to make her want to go, to walk away and never look back. He had tried sending her away before, given her the chance of picking up her life again and she hadn't taken it. This time, he had to drive her away by force.

She had asked if she was anything like him. His mouth twisted in bitterness. He couldn't hope to be half of what she was. He recalled the swift pain in her eyes as he played his trump card and raised the spectre of her replacement. What on earth would he do at a party anyway, apart from make himself ridiculous? It was far more likely that he would just try and throw himself into more and more dangerous adventures when she was gone, hoping to get lucky. Or was that unlucky? He wasn't sure. He knew she was hurting, could feel the first outpourings of her pain seeping through the TARDIS walls. He wanted to go to her, comfort her, hold her in the circle of his arms and never let her go, but he knew he couldn't. He had to remain distant, detached, a teacher, not a friend, not a lover. He straightened, considering. There was no reason why the TARDIS couldn't help her though. Turning on his heel he marched through the familiar corridors towards her room.

She had cried herself out. She lay, curled into a ball on her bed, forehead pressed against the coolness of the wall. Her heart was lashed and bleeding, her mind lurching from one pain to the next, and full of him. He had told her she had changed, had been damaged beyond repair by the images in her mind. While she might feel whole and safe within the TARDIS, as soon as she went outside she was lost. He had said he could teach her to control it, but she had seen the chaos waiting to pounce and she couldn't imagine it obeying her. But then — she wasn't going to have a lot of choice because now she was broken he wanted to get rid of her, package her up and send her back home. She meant nothing to him, he had made that clear. He was planning to replace her as quickly as he could. She stifled a sob. She had always guessed that there had been others before her, that she hadn't been the first he had invited into his life. But she had wanted to think that she was special, that they were special. He had talked so easily about finding someone else, that she knew he would forget her the minute she closed the door.

He had taken away the semblance she had of choice, and treated her like a child. He had dismissed their lovemaking out of hand, a mistake, and his mistake too, as if she had no part to play of her own, no desires of her own, no dreams of her own. He didn't love her, and if he knew she loved him he didn't care.

She was just some stupid ape, some stupid emotional child who couldn't be let out on her own. He had as good as said that she couldn't be trusted with the power she had been given. She felt the first flowerings of anger at him in her heart. He didn't love her, didn't need her, was going to leave her behind. He had — she gritted her teeth — sent her to her room.

The anger sprang up full grown, hot and heady, making her strong. She clenched her fists. If he wanted her out then fine. She would show him that she wasn't a child, was as capable as he was, could deal with whatever he wanted to throw at her. She would take what he offered and when she decided she was ready, she was leaving on her own.

She could feel her love for him still burning as brightly as it had always done and she used it, tempered it, turned it to steel. She closed her eyes, deliberately willing herself to sleep. She would be ready for him in the morning. At the edges of her consciousness she could feel a surge of warmth, comfort, reassurance wrapping around her like a blanket. It whispered of calm, peace, crooning a lullaby across her fraught senses, soothing her muscles until she let go. When she slept this time, she did not dream.

He removed his hand from the other side of the wall. Separated from her by only the thickness of the metal he lay back on his own pillow in the silence of the spare room next door. Through his link with the TARDIS he watched over her sleep, chasing away the night terrors that disturbed her, sealing her off from the visions that rushed through her head. It was good that she was angry with him, he thought, he should encourage her rage if it helped her to cope. But every step she took away from him was like a slice of his heart. He wondered how much he could stand to lose. This was his responsibility, not hers. All he could do was protect her. And so he watched over her through the silence of the night, cocooned her in his love.

It wasn't much, but it was the best gift he could give her.

The Car Crash Bride and The Postman's Daughter by Sally Anne Palmer - out now on Amazon!


	5. Chapter 5

She was woken the next morning with a polite knock on the door. She opened her eyes and stretched, feeling more refreshed than she had in a long time. The knock came again. She examined herself critically in the mirror, deciding she didn't care enough about what he thought of her to have a shower or change. She settled for dragging a comb through her hair, wiping the worst of the mascara from her cheeks. She answered the door.

He was already halfway down the corridor, leading her in silence to an unfamiliar part of the ship. He opened the door to a small room, dominated by a large table with a chair on either side, covered wall to wall with books. A cabinet held a selection of shiny metal objects of indeterminate purpose. He took a seat and smiled brightly at her until she did the same.

'Right then,' he said, 'I'll start by teaching you how to shield your thoughts. I'll show you what I'm doing and then you try. Close your eyes.'

She favoured him with a foul look before she did as she was asked.

'Now,' he said, 'I want you to imagine a picture of me in your mind and try to reach out towards it'.

Instinctively, she imagined a softer, familiar him, staring at her with warmth in his eyes and the beginnings of a smile, reaching out for her hand. Not the image she wanted, she decided, smashing it into pieces. She thought of the way he had looked at her yesterday, his eyes flat, expressionless, face solemn.

'Alright,' he said, his tone completely level, unaffected, 'now reach out towards the picture.' She groped for a few minutes in silence, sensing some sort of wall between her mind and the image she had created.

He explained, 'That's what you need to imagine, something to keep what you're thinking in and everyone else out. It's just control and focus. Now, try again and tell me what you see.'

Intrigued, she reached out towards the picture again and started as a different image jumped, fully formed into her mind. 'Um, apple,' she said. The image was replaced. 'Banana', again, 'cat, dog, elephant.' She realised what he was doing. Quicker than thought she was incandescent with rage. She popped open her eyes. 'I suppose you think that's funny,' she snapped, 'stop treating me like a child!'

He raised an eyebrow at her, 'Ever done this before?'

'Yes,' she hissed, shooting a jumble of impressions of the last time she had sensed his thoughts at him. Desire. Passion. Need.

He sounded amused, 'Touché.'

She glared at him. He smiled benignly.

'Let's see how easy it is for you then, shall we?' he said. With a mutinous look she closed her eyes, imagined a wall. 'No, useless,' he said instantly, 'I can see straight through. You're feeling angry — which, by the way, won't help, you have to control your emotions. You're wondering if you smell because you haven't had a shower. You're wondering whether you've dribbled down your top in your sleep — the answer's yes — you're imagining stabbing me with a very sharp knife — could be scissors actually.'

He was actually going to try for banter, she realised, glaring at him mutinously from underneath her hair. Reaching behind him he yanked out some sort of plastic sheet and put it on the table, 'Read that, do what it says, and I'll see you again, same time tomorrow.'

And he was gone. She was so annoyed at the casual manner with which he had breezed in and out of her mind that she nearly jumped up and down in her chair. Focus, she told herself, control - if he can do it, so can I, and she pulled the tablet towards her.

He waited outside the door until he was sure she had started and then wandered off down the corridor, feeling absurdly pleased. He could shrug off the distress that some of her thoughts had caused him in his pride at how quick she was. If she carried on at that pace she'd be ready to go in a couple of months. His smile died. He wandered on.

Many hours later, her mind hurting and eyes aching, she decided she had had enough. She wondered if she should tell him she had finished. Tentatively, she reached out a hand to the TARDIS wall and imagined the blue box in her mind, silently asking where he was. Instantly, she saw a picture of him lying on the floor, underneath the console, wires and tools strewn everywhere, clearly in for the long haul. Seeing him, her ire raised and she decided that she didn't need his permission after all. Rising from the chair she stretched, feeling stiff and walked out of the room. She spent the next couple of hours pounding out her rage and frustration in running before she returned to her room, eating alone, sleeping alone, talking to no one.

When she arrived at the schoolroom the next morning he was already there, waiting for her, looking bored. 'Ready?' he asked — straight to business.

She tried to follow the instructions she had studied so carefully but he was too much for her. 'You're wondering what I had for dinner — nothing, not hungry. You're thinking about going running later, you're wondering if there's a pool — out the door, turn left, third on the right.' He opened his eyes, 'Alright, enough. Same time tomorrow?' And he was gone.

On the third day he retrieved one of the bits of the equipment from the cabinet, pushed some buttons on it, and told her to practice. It spent the whole day firing some sort of electrical signal at her and beeping until she threw it against the wall.

On the fourth day she decided to be late, swanning into the room an hour after her time, only to find him reading, completely unperturbed.

On the fifth day she decided not to turn up at all and spent three hours pacing her room, checking his whereabouts through the TARDIS wall every ten minutes. When she could stand it no longer she shuffled off to the schoolroom, to be greeted with a cheery grin and absolutely no recrimination whatsoever.

By the end of the second week they had reached an uneasy truce. She would see him for five minutes a day, during which time he would laugh at her efforts, giving her no encouragement or telling her what she was doing wrong, always smiling, bothered by nothing she did. She imagined beating his head in very slowly, with a spoon.

For his part, he lived for the short moments alone with her, killing the time until he could see her again with urgent missions, life and death escapades, the more difficult and dangerous the better. He was trying to hurt her and the only way he knew to make himself feel better was to punish himself in return. It was a half life, out in the universe on his own again, but knowing she was still waiting for him. By day, he took care to annoy her as much as possible and by night, he eased her dreams.

At the end of the third week she thought she would go mad if she didn't talk to someone else. She had learnt to check his location with a flick of her mind and when she sidled into the console room she already knew he wouldn't be there. She walked straight to the doors and found them shut against her. She couldn't get out. She kicked the door, and, for good measure, walked over to kick the console. She wished she could see outside and noted that the viewscreen had changed to show a dark, indistinct scene, too small to pick out the details. Deliberately, she imagined a large, wall mounted screen and heard a high pitched buzz as the walls rearranged themselves to provide one.

Outside was a place of metal, struts and braces making square patterns in the sky. The doubleness of her vision hit her with a vengeance as she looked at it, seeing the reflections of the structures until her mind was full of edges. She didn't fall. She forced herself to concentrate on different parts of the picture, the indistinct humanoid figures she could see moving. One was running towards the screen. She knew that run. She focused on the figure, drawing an imaginary circle around it, and saw the rest of the picture ripple and clarify into a single steady image. She could see that the running man was being pursued, other figures close behind and shards of red light flying past him at regular intervals. She could see his coat flapping as he ran, his arm held awkwardly, the rictus grin and feral glint in his eye.

As she stared, her vision split — one of the spooling images showing the red light hit him, the figures swarming towards him as he fell; in the other, the light missed and he ran on. She concentrated all her attention on the second image, reaching out to pull it towards her, slapping the other one aside, pushing it down. The light missed him and she heard the door slam open behind her. She turned. He was obviously injured. There was a cut below his right cheekbone and he was cradling one arm with the other. She took a step towards him, silently sending him a wave of concern. He flicked his good hand at her, waving her away.

The level of her background rage - always seething under the surface — rose: 'Where the hell have you been?' He rolled his eyes at her, taking something small and shiny from his pocket and putting it on the table. 'And that is?' she snapped.

He shrugged, 'Dunno, probably junk. You want to see where they were keeping it though'. He straightened, 'So, I assume because you're here that you're wanting another test?'

Her fingertips itched with violence. Not only had he locked her in, he'd put himself in danger, got himself hurt without her, had risked himself for something worthless and left her helpless to save him. And then brushed her off. Again. Her anger consumed her. If he wanted to play, she was ready. She fixed her gaze on his, filled her mind with the only images she thought would embarrass him, might provoke a reaction. Herself, spread beneath him, head thrown back, face suffused with ecstasy. Above, he moved slowly inside her, the corded muscles of his neck standing out as he strained towards release. Part fantasy, part memory, all weapon.

She could see she had hit him — his eyes widened slightly, then narrowed. In response, he fired back a stream of images — her body convulsing as she was shot by a Dalek, her eyes open in death in the ruins of an exploded building, her face contorted in pain as an alien claw sliced through her. Pictures of her death surrounded her at every turn, the direct consequence of the pictures she had shown him. Her chin came up. She accepted them all, did not flinch. She was human, her death was inevitable, and she had long ago understood the risks she ran. He couldn't intimidate her.

A thought occurred to him and he changed the thrust of his bombardment. Instead, he sent her images of him — chained, tortured, bloodied, surrounded by foes, dead and forgotten on the floor of some far away corridor, disintegrating into atoms piece by piece. He heard her gasp, and at long last, felt her slam up a barrier against him, closing her off from the stream of death and misery. He felt like dancing. Walking past her, he tousled her hair, murmured 'Good girl,' against her ear as he headed off to the medical centre to fix his broken arm. She might be angry, and brave, and quite happy to fight him, but despite all he had done, it was the thought of losing him that disturbed her most. He knew he should be disappointed but for the moment, just couldn't bring himself to it.

The next morning, he brought her a bird. He had thought hard about this move, knowing it would upset her, unable to think of any other way to tell her what she needed to know. She had to understand the consequences of her actions. Like the fact that the consequence of loving him was death, for example. There was a cause and effect she clearly hadn't grasped. Despite his lapse of the previous evening his decision was unchanged. Kill her love before it killed her and take her home. It made the bird necessary. He put the cage down on the table between them, removed the cover.

She looked tired again, he thought, a whisper of guilt ghosting through him for spending the night in the medical centre, instead of warding her. Fatigued or not, her defences were firmly in place now, and he had no sense of her thoughts, no insight into her soul. The desolate silence in his mind was a renewed sorrow, but he embraced it willingly, for her sake.

'Look at the bird, Rose', he asked in resignation, 'tell me what you see.'

She looked at the tiny ball of feathers, imprisoned in its cage. She knew how it felt. Another one of his pets, to be taken out and played with whenever he felt the need, patted on the head and told it was good and then put away again, forgotten. She felt she had lost who she was. Left alone for weeks on end, unable to leave but dreading to stay, helpless, useless, unimportant. She was a burden to him now, even her anger turned against her. She looked at the bird and saw herself.

She tried to bring the otherness of her vision into focus. As she stared at the cage she could see the short span of the bird's life moving in fast forward — egg to chick, chick to bird, bird to ashes. She didn't reply.

'Concentrate on slowing down the pictures,' he told her.

She tried, focusing on seeing an egg, and just an egg in the space where the bird had been. All her conscious thought she concentrated on one part of the image until she was aware that impression of feathers had been subsumed within a shiny shell. It was a tremendous effort though, she had no attention to spare for anything else as complex as moving, or thinking, or showing him what she saw.

She didn't need to show him. He could see for himself. Instead of a bird, the cage now contained an egg. She only retained an echo of the vortex, she had lost the power of life and death over the universe, but it seemed she wasn't entirely impotent either. What Rose saw was real. He raised his hands, massaged his temples. This wasn't going to be pretty.

She filled her mind with the egg and reached out towards feathers. She was rewarded with hatching, growing, struggling, flying as she pulled the next image and the next towards her. She was elated — she had mastered this so easily. As long as she focused hard enough, she could see anything she wanted. She wondered how fast she could go, tugging on the pictures like a rope, tumbling faster and faster. Abruptly there was a shake, and the ball of feathers in its cage stopped moving, falling on its back with a pantomime thud. She blinked, trying to open her eyes and realising they were already open. She saw him looking at her with concern.

She pushed her finger through the bars of the cage, poked the tiny form. 'What happened?' she asked.

'It's dead Rose,' he answered, 'you killed it.'

She laughed ' No,' letting out the word slowly as she breathed, still smiling.

He didn't see the joke. 'I've told you what you can see now,' he explained. 'Past, future, all of that. You can't just see it, you can change it too. Every time you reach out towards something, drag it closer, you make it happen. You've done it at least twice — you didn't know what you were describing when you woke up after Satellite 5 but you should have had some idea yesterday. It's not that I don't appreciate not being shot in the back, but the question is — what are you Rose? Twice, you've changed time to save me but you slaughtered nearly half a million Daleks to do it, and the bird is dead. What are you — saviour or destroyer? 'Coward or killer'?' he shrugged. 'Who are you to decide who must die and who can live?'

Choice. It was all about choice, she realised. He'd shouted at her about it from the time she woke up. She had killed. Easily, without conscience, taking away the choices of her victims. She didn't recognise herself anymore. She knew why he didn't love her, wanted her to leave, she was an abomination. She was empty, lost, riddled with guilt; unable to see how she could move forward, too afraid to confront what she had done. Once, she had asked him who he was. Now, she knew.

The next morning she beat him to the schoolroom, asked him to teach her in a distant, toneless voice he didn't know, the dead expression in her eyes wrenching at his heart. His throat constricted momentarily at the sight of her, the cost of his success. She hadn't slept, despite his best efforts. It wasn't the Daleks she was mourning, but the capacity for death she had discovered within herself, the loss of her innocence.

Pushing buttons, he produced a viewscreen to replace the books and filled it with a sea of flowers. 'One at a time,' he instructed. He retrieved a piece of folded paper from his pocket, threw it on the table. 'That's how many I think will die,' he said, leaving her.

She barely heard him. She spent the next three days concentrating on a single flower at a time, focusing until she could see one image of it, holding it steady, stilling the chaos before she allowed her sight to move either way. Three days of moving by precarious millimetres, making sure she didn't damage, did no harm. Three days spent looking at a sea of red roses so closely she didn't notice them at all. When she looked at the paper there was nothing written on it.

She progressed to plants, trees, fish, animals, mountains, landscapes, starfields, empty cities, ruined and alone. Days spread into weeks, months. She withdrew into herself, spending all her time locked in a desperate struggle to control her capabilities. She barely ate, but at night she slept like the dead. Eventually, she couldn't remember a time before she had opened the vortex, opened her mind. She saw him occasionally, but he passed through her mind like footprints in the sand, washed away by the next thought. She had nothing left of herself to give him. Once, he sat with her in front of a village sequence, asked her to tell him about the tumbledown houses, see the time when their mossy stones had been full of light and life, love and happiness. It made her cry.

The next day, there were people in the picture on her wall. She went more slowly still. She taught herself to see without touching, to master the reflections, to find the eye of the storm, the heart of the vortex and bring peace to her sight.

He appeared at the door of her room one night, and it was a surprise to her to remember that she knew him. 'Tomorrow, I'll take you home,' he said.

The Postman's Daughter and The Car Crash Bride by Sally Anne Palmer are available now on Amazon.


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